On today's BradCast, a self-identified "establishment Republican" pushes back against Donald Trump's claims that the election will be "rigged", but goes on to deny that his own party has promoted the very "voter fraud" conspiracies that the Republican nominee is now exploiting. [Audio link to complete show is posted below.]

Trump has been increasingly strident of late in his rhetoric charging that the election is being "rigged" by "large scale voter fraud" and more. As he does so, his supporters are using more and more violent rhetoric to describe "bloodshed" and even assassination should their candidate fail to win on November 8th. As a disturbing Boston Globe report noted over the weekend, it has now fallen to establishment GOPers to try and calm the increasingly dangerous waters.

Former New Hampshire GOP chairman Fergus Cullen, a self-described 'Never Trumper' who characterizes the increasingly violent rhetoric from Trump supporters as 'very scary', joins us today to rebut Trump's charges about fraud and decry threats of violence by his followers. "He's doing terrible damage to the Republican brand," Cullen says. "Even after he's defeated, he's going to be causing trouble for our party for quite awhile, probably, in terms of how it's identified in the eyes of millions of Americans."

"On election night when Donald Trump is defeated, he's going to have a really important choice. Does he say responsible things that are aimed at accepting the outcome and telling his supporters that they should accept the outcome as well. Or, does he in fact pour gasoline on a fire, and continue the rhetoric that he's been using in the last ten days?"

But later, in the course of our conversation, it took a very bizarre turn. Cullen went on to reject the very premise of the idea that the Republican Party bears some responsibility for the effectiveness of Trump's claims, given the party has loudly forwarded false claims of massive Democratic 'voter fraud', for political gain, for more than a decade. He doesn't think that has happened.

"I don't think there's any argument that, certainly, some Republicans do believe that voter fraud takes place on significant scale enough to affect elections. I don't think the party has been pushing that line," Cullen tells me. As you'll hear, and as you might expect, that notion took me by complete surprise during the conversation. He compares "various conspiracy theories out there" with those from "the black helicopter crowd" and UFO spotters, but says "please don't blame the party for institutionalizing this nonsense."

I remain as gobsmacked here as anyone who has ever spent more than 15 minutes reading The BRAD BLOG or has even watched Fox "News" for about the same amount of time. While I expected to disagree on a few points (including computer tabulators vs. hand-counts in NH, which we discussed as well) and while Cullen was very nice and very generous with his time in joining us today, I'm still stunned that he is actually denying the very existence of the years-long, very well-funded effort by the very top echelon of the national GOP meant to deceive the public about "voter fraud". (See this Special Coverage page and this one for just a tiny taste of their efforts and our decade plus coverage of it. Listen to the conversation and its follow-up segment on today's show for much more.)

Also today: A bit of good news for voters, as a federal court has once again smacked down the state of Florida, this time for a GOP-enacted scheme that would have unnecessarily rejected thousands of absentee ballots; Ohio's Republican Sec. of State continues to fight a federal court order to restore more than a million illegally purged voters to the rolls; And we cover a fresh spate of violent and political terror attacks and plots by Trump-supporting Rightwing extremists against Muslims and others.

And, finally, a few thoughts on the curious case of the weekend firebombing of a Republican Party campaign office in NC...

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On today's BradCast, "this is not normal, this is not politics as usual", Michelle Obama declared. But, at least in Palm Beach County, FL, after last week's hurricane, the top election official says she's ready for whatever storm may be coming. [Audio to the complete show is linked below.]

I'm joined today by Susan Bucher, Palm Beach County, FL Supervisor of Elections, to discuss preparations for late voter registrations following Hurricane Matthew and what she suspects may be record turnout in Early and Election Day voting. She describes yesterday's court order to extend the registration period until October 18th as "a victory for all Floridians," and says that, despite the tight deadlines now before early voting begins on October 24th, her county is ready.

"We're a tough state, we're a tough county --- and we've been working overtime for a month to make sure we're ready for the big push. We opened our doors on the holiday on Monday. We were just slammed with lots of people all day. We opened early, we stayed late. All of our employees have been working overtime. We will get it done before early voting starts," she vows.

"Millennials now outnumber senior citizens and nearly half the voters under 30 are Latino or African-American," Bucher explains. "And, especially after the last debate, we saw a very large push of citizens out there. There are young people registering voters and bringing us stacks [of registrations] that are a foot deep. People are very anxious about this election. We have 880,000 voters and, let me tell you, I have never seen it so supercharged as I see it now. The last Presidential turnout was 70 percent. We're setting up for about 80-85 and maybe more."

Her county was, before she arrived eight years ago, made infamous for its Butterfly Ballot disaster during Florida's 2000 Presidential election debacle, one of the "original sins" leading us directly to the poisonous politics of the 2016 Presidential Election, as I detail once again on today's show. But Bucher says she ready, as we revisit more recent disasters in her county and state, such as Republican Governor Rick Scott's failed attempt to unlawfully purge thousands of legitimate voters from the rolls in 2012; the 6-hour long lines to vote that same year, after Scott cut the number of Early Voting days in half; and the paper ballot computer tabulators which incorrectly reported the results of three races in Palm Beach, declaring losing candidates to be "winners" back in 2010.

(Bucher tells me the software failures in those Sequoia tabulators have now been corrected in her county, but says she has many checks and balances in place, and is ready to go to court to get approval once again for hand-counting, if necessary, as she did in 2010 when she happened to notice the strange results. The state does not allow a hand-count of paper ballots without a court order. "It's unfortunate that it always takes court action with this Governor and this Secretary [of State] but if that's what works, then that's what we need to do," she tells me, going on to describe the recent conference call with the U.S. Dept. of Homeland Security regarding concerns of hacks to voting and registration systems in the Sunshine State and elsewhere around the country.)

Meanwhile, in Georgia, as in Florida, voting rights groups filed suit to extend the voter registration deadline there as well, following mandatory evacuations over the final weekend of voter registration.

Also today, hear them roar: Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) excoriates Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf for a lack of accountability, despite the announcement of his resignation after admitting fraudulent practices at the nation's largest bank. Then, Michelle Obama delivers a blistering speech condemning sexual harassment in the wake of Hurricane Trump, as an avalanche of women come forward to detail disturbing allegations against the Republican Presidential nominee. We offer an extended excerpt from her remarks at a New Hampshire rally today.

Finally: Desi Doyen, who also has a thought or two on Michelle's remarks and the allegations against Trump, brings us the latest, very busy, Green News Report...

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On today's BradCast, updates, racism, lies, voting rights and video tape. [Audio link posted below.]

We've got several updates on the situation in Charlotte, NC following the police killing of Keith Lamont Scott, including the release of an eyewitness video of the shooting said to be from his wife's cellphone. While the tape is heart-wrenching in and of itself, it also appears to show something that looks like a gun seemingly appearing from out of nowhere on the ground next to the victim's body. As noted on the show, I'm not sure what to make of this. It could somehow be a trick of light, shadows, editing, camera angle or...it might not be a gun at all. Others (NBC's Joy Reid, Rolling Stone's Tim Dickinson) seemed to be wondering about it as well.

See it for yourself in both the New York Times version of the video as well as the NBC News version. (Enlarge the videos and watch the ground to the right of the body, just next to one of the cop's feet from appx 1:43 to 1:44 in the NBC version and appx 2:01 to 2:02 in the NYTimes version. The NBC version is a bit easier to see, since they have crop/zoomed-in the cellphone framing a bit.) Strange. No real comment. So, I'll just leave that here for now. (But, yes, police do get caught planting guns and falsifying police reports.)

Also today, more blatant and rather jaw-dropping racist statements from the (now former) Trump campaign chair in Mahoning County, OH, Republican U.S. Congressman Robert Pittenger (who represents Charlotte!) and, of course, from Trump himself.

Then, in advance of Monday's Presidential debate, a new non-partisan analysis finds the GOP nominee's proposed elimination of ObamaCare and replacement healthcare plan would result in 20 million Americans losing health coverage. We also review his repeated lie that he opposed the Obama/Clinton actions to intervene in Libya and take out Qaddafi (with audio from 2011 in which he declares the opposite in no uncertain terms.)

Next, troubling e-voting and hacking news and new court rulings and cases concerning voter suppression in the states of Ohio, Georgia and Texas. Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for an important Green News Report, as well as some disturbing, recently unearthed remarks from Libertarian Presidential nominee Gary Johnson concerning global warming...

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On today's BradCast, I'm back after the holiday weekend, but you should tune in anyway! We're live today from the KPFK/Pacifica Radio studios in Los Angeles, as I try to catch up on stuff we missed over the long weekend, and breaking news today.

Among the stories we cover on today's program...

* Tightening Presidential polls [PDF] as pollsters change their methodology to move from "registered" to "likely" voters, as Donald Trump has taken a lead or is tied with Hillary Clinton in a couple of national polls and gaining in some swing states. Nonetheless, Clinton maintains her lead in the Electoral College and even remains competitive in a number of "red" states where she is receiving support from some surprising corners.

* North Carolina's vote suppressing Republican Governor Pat McCrory believes states should have "voting rights", as opposed to people/voters.

* We're reminded today, once again, that every vote counts (or, at least, should), as Helen Purcell, the controversial election chief in Maricopa County (Phoenix), appears to have won her Republican Primary by just over a hundred votes out of more than 300,000 cast, after trailing by just a few hundred votes following last week's state primary in Arizona. The exact percentage flip (she was reportedly losing the day after the election 49.93% to 50.07% against her challenger Aaron Flannery, before defeating him 50.07% to 49.93% as of today, according to Purcell's optical-scan computers reported on Purcell's website) reminds us once again of the need to publicly hand-count paper ballots on Election Night. Purcell, Maricopa's Republican County Recorder since 1988, was roundly criticized for reducing polling locations from more than 200 in 2012 down to 60 during the Presidential Primary in March. Flannery, her challenger last week, has said he cannot afford to mount a challenge to ask for a hand count, but will consider running again in 2020. If the current results hold, Purcell will face Democrat Adrian Fontes in November.

* Then, Desi Doyen joins us for the latest on the growing protests and emergency legal battles by the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe in North Dakota against the desecration of sacred sites with the construction of the massive, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers-approved (and EPA-opposed) Dakota Access Pipeline and the bad faith actions of its supporters.

Finally, we take listener calls on all of the above! Enjoy!...

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On today's BradCast: As several polls tighten in advance of the Presidential election, the FBI issues a new warning to states about voting system intrusion and last minute battles continue in federal courts over voting rights access to the polls.

First up, a new report today from investigative journalist Michael Isikoff warns of recent intrusions, believe to be by foreign entities, into voter registration systems in both Illinois and Arizona. The report cites an "FBI Flash" warning [PDF] from its Cyber Division, recently issued to state election officials in hopes of warding off similar intrusions to electronic registration and voting systems in advance of the November election.

The latest news on the completely foreseeable vulnerabilities in our voting and registration systems underscores (yet again) what we've been warning about for so many years at both The BRAD BLOG and The BradCast. Unfortunately, as usual, reporting on this issue from mainstream corporate media comes too late to make much of a difference before the next election, after which the warnings are likely to be all but forgotten...until just before the next election.

Then, BradBlog.com's long-time legal analyst, attorney Ernest A. Canning joins us for an update on the roller coaster-like voting rights battles still waging in federal courts across the country, including the latest disturbing news on Photo ID voting restrictions in Wisconsin and why something known as "The Purcell Principle" will, once again, play a key role in all of those legal fights this year.

Canning, who also wrote about the just the latest example of GOP "voter fraud" hypocrisy over the weekend, summarizes the latest dispositions in a number of key court fights against racially discriminatory Photo ID voting restrictions in Wisconsin, Texas and North Carolina, and related legal battles over access to the polls in states such as Kansas, Arizona and the swing-state of Ohio. All of those cases are likely to have an impact on results up and down the ballot this year.

Finally, we say goodbye to the hilarious Gene Wilder today, a regular presence --- in both voice and spirit --- on The BradCast...

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On today's BradCast, amidst a fresh flurry of mainstream media coverage of how simple it is to manipulate election results via electronic voting and tabulation systems, Politico Magazine offers a blockbuster cover story describing it as "child's play" and, as it turns out, also serving as a virtual "Best Of" from the past 15 years of The BRAD BLOG's coverage of e-voting failure and concerns. [Audio link to full show posted below.]

Ben Wofford's 8,500+ word feature today on how a group of computer scientists and cybersecurity experts coming out of Princeton University have, in recent years, been able to hack virtually every such system still in use across all 50 states in the U.S., details one story after another that we've either broken or covered in detail, and highlights the brilliant work of a bunch of the scientists and experts who I've interviewed on the blog or radio show or who have otherwise served as sources for much of my reporting over the years both at The BRAD BLOG and other publications.

(Just a very few of those greatest hit hacks from over the years: the Diebold Touch-Screen Virus Hack, the Sequoia Pac-Man Hack, the $26 Radio Shack Hack, the D.C. Internet Voting Hack.)

More importantly (as I detailed earlier today), Wofford's lengthy and well-researched report offers hints that even the computer scientists are finally beginning to concede that the most secure voting and counting system of all may be plain old, hand-marked paper ballots, publicly counted by hand at each precinct on election night before ballots are moved anywhere. (What I've long described as "Democracy's Gold Standard".)

As Shane Harris reports at The Daily Beast this week in his piece "How Hackers Could Destroy Election Day", there are many ways that electronic voting and tabulation threatens American democracy, including by someone merely claiming that the vote has been hacked, whether it really has been or not. "If you have a system that's been shown to have vulnerabilities, even if someone doesn't attack them, but creates the impression that they might have, in a closely contested elections you've got a problem," explains Johns Hopkins' computer scientist Avi Rubin, one of the first to detail the enormous vulnerabilities in computer tabulator source code (in systems made by Diebold, in that case.)

Also today: After the nation's most conservative federal appeals court recently found Texas Republicans violated the Voting Rights Act with their racially discriminatory Photo ID voting law, the state agrees to a court-ordered remedy that broadly expands ID types that may be used for voting, re-enfranchising at least 600,000 legally registered, disproportionately Dem-leaning Texas voters in the bargain.

Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for the latest Green News Report with some accountability in Michigan, and to bat down several persistent wingnut climate changes myths (from Donald Trump and WI's Republican Sen. Ron Johnson among others) that just won't die, no matter how much independently verifiable science gets thrown at them...

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Please read the cover story of Politico Magazine today headlined "How to Hack an Election in 7 Minutes". Ben Wofford's excellent, comprehensive feature summarizes a great deal of almost 15 years of our work here at The BRAD BLOG. He focuses his piece on the core of computer science and cybersecurity experts initially working out of Princeton University back in 2005 or so, who have, since that time, gone on to publicly hack virtually every electronic voting system and tabulator still in use around the country (and even, looking forward, hacking at least one planned Internet Voting scheme.)

We've covered and/or broke the news about many of those landmark exploits, both here and on the radio, going back through 2005 or so. I don't have time to collect all the links here at the moment, but it's very nice to see so many of them rounded up so thoroughly in Wofford's piece.

The 8,500+ word article is far too detailed to adequately summarize, or even quote from in detail here. So please go pour a tall drink or cup of coffee (you may need several, there's a lot there) and go read about the "parabola of havoc and mismanagement that has been the fifteen-year nightmare of state and local officials", as he accurately describes it, following the horrifically misguided and ill-advised move to computerized voting and tabulation systems following the 2000 election. I suspect we've filed almost as many articles on this topic as Wofford has words in today's piece!

But there's one element of his piece I want to ring in on specifically, as I think it represents something a bit more encouraging from the computer scientists who are discussed in the report than I have seen over the years...

On today's BradCast, after great news on voting rights from a bunch of state and federal courts over the past week, and sudden concerns from the the Right, the Left and the corporate media about the possibility of stolen elections, the Dept. of Homeland Security is finally looking into taking action. [Audio link to today's program posted below.]

"We should carefully consider whether our election system, our election process is critical infrastructure, like the financial sector, like the power grid," DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson said this week. "There’s a vital national interest in our electoral process."

Years ago, I began reporting on the serious vulnerability of our election system to manipulation (and error) from both foreign and domestic sources. In 2006, for example, after helping supply computer security analysts at Princeton University with a Diebold touch-screen voting system for the first independent tests of such a machine, I reported both at The BRAD BLOG and at Salon that the analysts were able to hack into it, in about 60 seconds time, with a virus that would flip election results and pass itself from machine to machine with virtually no possibility of detection. That followed on an Exclusive series of 2005 reports from a Diebold insider who I called "DIEB-THROAT" at the time, describing how the company's lead programmers admitted that the security on their systems was terrible and that a branch of DHS had already warned, in 2004, about an "undocumented back door" in the systems.

In 2009, by way of just one more example, we reported here on remarks delivered to the U.S. Elections Assistance Commission (EAC) by CIA cybersecurity analyst Steven Stigall, describing how "wherever the vote becomes an electron and touches a computer, that's an opportunity for a malicious actor potentially to make bad things happen," before going on to note that the CIA became interested in electronic voting systems years earlier "after concluding that foreigners might try to hack U.S. election systems."

So, it is with some skepticism that I regard Johnson's remarks this week about finally taking action to identify our existing, vulnerable electoral system as "critical infrastructure". Is it too little, too late on the eve of another Presidential election? And is it even possible to protect the type of electronic vote casting and counting systems we currently use in our elections? And what does the designation as "critical infrastructure" actually mean any way?

I'm joined on today's program for some answers by Scott Shackelford, cybersecurity law and business expert from Indiana University and the Harvard Kennedy School's Belfter Center, to explain some of this, and to describe some of the ways in which the U.S. might expand existing international agreements to keep domestic elections from being tampered with by foreign powers. Shackelford, writes about the issue this week at the Christian Science Monitor in an op-ed titled "How to make democracy harder to hack."

"It definitely is too late at this point to wake up and get all 9,000 jurisdictions on board for November," he tells me today. "Maybe instead of focusing quite so much on driver's licenses [to prevent fraud] and making sure we have different IDs in some of these states, it would've been great to have put that focus a little bit more on cybersecurity. But that didn't happen."

For what it's worth, my answer, after more than a decade on this beat: No, it's not possible to protect the type of electronic systems we currently use without moving to what I describe as "Democracy's Gold Standard". But Shackelford offers several ways we can, at least, try to improve the situation and mitigate the current dangers, as well as some thoughts on why action has been so long in coming. "Elections do quite a bit to focus minds. It is unfortunate that we lose some of that focus in the aftermath of these elections," he says.

Also today, why the right to vote is so important, whether you like it or use it or not, and why, for me, at least, it's still about rights, not politics, some 52 years to the day after the bodies of civil rights activists Andrew Goodman, James Earl Chaney and Michael Henry Schwerner were found after being murdered in Mississippi for trying to help register African-Americans to vote in 1964.

And, finally, speaking of vulnerable, as deadly, climate-fueled extreme weather continues across the planet, Republican U.S. Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, up for re-election this year against former Democratic U.S. Senator Russ Feingold, offers up some of the dumbest, most embarrassing, scientifically disproven and just out-and-out inaccurate arguments against taking action on climate change that he could possibly muster. All of that and more on today's BradCast...

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On today's BradCast, we examine charges made by Donald Trump of a rigged November election, the case made by Bernie Sanders supporters that Hillary Clinton may have won the primary due to election fraud, and the mainstream corporate media finally deciding that, yes, hacked voting and tabulation systems really are a threat to American elections. [Link to audio of today's program follows below.]

It's fun (not really) to see corporate media outlets --- once again on the eve a major election --- suddenly very worried about so much of what we have been reporting (see, literally, thousands of stories at The BRAD BLOG and on The BradCast) about the vulnerability of the U.S. electoral system. We've been warning of exactly that for more than a decade.

The recent concerns follow the hack of DNC emails, said by Dems to have been carried out by Russian intelligence agencies, months of charges of "election fraud!" from Sanders supporters, and now new charges from Trump and friends that the Presidential Election will be stolen by Dems this November by electronic voting machines or voter fraud (or whatever the hell he and his supporters are now sputtering.)

It might all have been more fun had all of the above noticed these concerns years ago, rather than right after what some believe is a stolen election and right before one that some believe could be stolen. Ya know, back when there would have been time to move to transparent voting and counting systems instead.

Nonetheless, with those real concerns --- from all sides --- of hacked, stolen, manipulated or just plain erroneously reported election results, I note that "concerns" are not proof of fraud. So, today, we examine the various arguments, including some detailed thoughts --- both critical and complimentary --- on a new 100-page draft report [PDF] by Election Justice USA, titled "Democracy Lost: A Report on the Fatally Flawed 2016 Democratic Primaries".

Their report (and others making similar charges in recent months) details what EJUSA believes to be proof and/or evidence of fraud that benefited Hillary Clinton during the primary. In stark summary (much more detail offered on today's show itself!), the group's evidence of voter registration fraud in some locations is disturbing, if not completely unlike what we've seen in previous elections. But, I am somewhat less moved by their evidence of electronic voting and tabulation manipulation, as based largely on analysis of disparities between Exit Polling and reported election results. I try and explain why I am not particularly persuaded by studies of Exit Polls in regard to U.S. elections, and why, frankly, my response to their report would be similar whether they found proof of fraud or proof of zero fraud in the election. In both cases I would say what I have been saying for years: We need publicly hand-counted, hand-marked, paper-ballots in this country in order to have real confidence in results. (That is what I've long described as Democracy's Gold Standard.)

Short of that, with computerized voting and counting systems that are difficult, if not impossible for the public to oversee, confidence in U.S. elections will continue to erode whether fraud or error actually exists in the results or not. That, in and of itself, as I have shouted for years, continues to present a grave threat to America's system of representative democracy.

All of that and the latest Green News Report, on today's BradCast...

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More than half a million ballots remain to be processed and tallied from California's June 7th Presidential Primary, and thousands of those votes have just been saved. On today's BradCast we speak to a citizen vote count observer in Los Angeles County who, through her diligence, just days ago, helped change L.A.'s process for determining which provisional ballots will be tallied, potentially saving tens of thousands of Democratic votes from being tossed in the bargain. [Audio link to complete show posted at bottom of this article.]

First today, the latest on the breaking news out of Turkey where an apparent terror attack had killed at least 28 people by air time today. Then, U.S. House Republicans release their final Benghazi report, for what it's worth, and Donald Trump continues to plummet in national polls, even as he remains quite competitive with Hillary Clinton in swing states.

Then, I'm joined by Julie Tyler, Los Angeles filmmaker and citizen vote count observer with Ballots for Bernie, to discuss how her oversight of on-going Provisional Ballot processing in L.A. has resulted in thousands of Democratic Primary votes cast by "No Party Preference" (NPP) voters being included in the tally, instead of being tossed out, as originally planned by election officials.

Indeed, The BRAD BLOG confirmed late last week with L.A. County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk Dean Logan that the County changed its process for determining voter intent after Tyler noticed that some provisional votes cast on Democratic ballot cards (instead of NPP-Democratic "cross over" cards) were being discarded under Logan's original process.

"I have further reviewed that category of provisional ballots," Logan said in a statement he sent via email, "and I am in agreement that the ballot card itself is sufficient to indicate voter intent to participate in the Democratic primary under the liberal construction clause of Elections Code 14312; therefore canvass staff has been instructed to process all such ballots as NPP-DEM cross over ballots and to prepare them for tabulation in subsequent updates as scheduled."

He went on to explain that, "while there is no process for a challenge to the determination of voter intent on provisional ballots, the election official does have to authority to identify the need for and to take corrective action during the canvass period. I am exercising that authority with regard to any provisional ballots processed and counted prior to the clarification listed above. Those ballots are being identified and will be re-processed as NPP-DEM cross over ballots and will reflect a vote cast in the Presidential contest, if any." Logan told me that some 2,801 ballots processed under the original interpretation of the rules were reprocessed under the new ones, and the more than 100,000 still-unprocessed provisionals in L.A. County will be verified and tallied under the new interpretation of the rules as well.

Tyler and others observers estimate some 60,000 votes may have been otherwise tossed, and tells me (though I haven't confirmed this part) that the CA Secretary of State is instructing other counties to similarly review their procedures for the inclusion of provisional Presidential votes from the June Democratic Primary, which Clinton still leads over Sanders, with the statewide margin very slowly narrowing and more than half a million ballots still untallied statewide as of today, in advance of the July 8 state certification deadline.

"It's our democracy, and it doesn't happen in a vacuum," Tyler tells me on today's show, while explaining how she noticed the problem initially and brought it to the attention of election officials, emphasizing "how important it is for observers to be on hand when these tallies are being done, for this very reason."

"It's not something that those people do over there. We have to take part. Frankly, I found the whole thing fascinating," she says, urging others to participate in this crucial aspect of our elections and noting "how empowering [it is] to know that, simply being there and observing, you can find errors and weigh in...Everybody has that power." Thank you, Julie! Couldn't agree more!

Finally today, we finish with our latest Green News Report on Volkswagen's $15 billion settlement with U.S. customers, as part of their emissions cheating scandal, Transcanada's $15 billion NAFTA complaint over U.S. rejection of the KeystoneXL pipeline, and much more...

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On today's BradCast, the bombshell passage of Britain's EU 'Brexit' Referendum is shaking both world markets and politics. Is the rise of nationalism and anti-immigration sentiment in the UK a disturbing omen for the U.S. Presidential election this fall? [Audio link to complete show is below.]

Donald Trump certainly hopes so, as he's changed his position on European unity from just three years ago, when he was for it, to today, when he's apparently against it, now that he's running for President. On today's show we discuss a number of things that Americans can and should learn from both the dishonest politics of the Brexit vote and the way the election itself was carried out (on publicly hand-counted, hand-marked paper ballots.)

Meanwhile, back here across the pond, the fight to count votes from the June 7th primary in California continues, and the fight to keep (certain) voters from voting at all continues as well in a federal courtroom in North Carolina (No, Washington Post, Photo ID is not required to board an airplane and you should let your readers know as much), and in the great state of Texas, where so-called 'conservatives' have spent millions of taxpayer dollars attempting to defend their illegal, discriminatory and unconstitutional Photo ID voting restriction year after year in case after case. (Texit, anyone?)

Finally, we look at details from the unlawful purge of voters in Brooklyn, which came to light after the NY state primary in April. Were Sanders voters purged at a higher rate than Clinton voters, as Sanders supporters have been charging? We look at some of the actual evidence now in, which suggests otherwise (and as we've previously argued.) Plus: Death toll rising along with flood waters in West Virginia and in China; And Bluegrass fans lose a legend...

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On today's BradCast, have Bernie Sanders supporters been responsible in their attempts to oversee voting and vote tabulation during this year's Democratic Primary? How about long time Election Integrity advocates and journalists? Are cries of "FRAUD!!!" in the race between Sanders and Hillary Clinton misguided and misleading? Or are they on-point? [Audio link to show is posted below.]

From a sweltering Los Angeles, on the first official day of Summer, I speak to some of the many claims and allegations that this year's Democratic primary was "stolen" --- either by Hillary Clinton, the DNC, or anybody else. Just a few thoughts on all of this from someone who has investigated and covered issues of Election Integrity and fraud and voter suppression and non-overseeable computer voting systems and tabulators, often in excruciating detail, for more than a decade at The BRAD BLOG, on The BradCast, and anywhere else that would have me. As part of today's epic rant on all of this, I also offer some advice to those who believe California was "stolen", and how state law allows them to actually try and find out...if they really want to.

Also today, the Sanders campaign says supporters are answering his call from last week for fresh candidates to step up and run for office with progressive platforms at the local, state and federal level.

Meanwhile, the NRA-funded Republicans continue to obstruct any meaningful legislative action to try and help prevent gun violence following last week's massacre in Orlando, as the U.S. Senate blocks attempts to bar suspected terrorists from buying weapons of mass destruction at local gun shops, gun shows and online. All of that is playing out, as Donald Trump, the GOP's presumptive nominee for President, offers a particularly egregious lie in hopes of backpedaling from his repeated statements last week that he would have liked to have seen club patrons with many more guns in that dark, crowded LGBT nightclub in Orlando. It's a position that even the terrorist-enabling NRA no longer seems to fully agree with.

Finally, with firearm violence plummeting in California --- while it remains steady nationally --- the state legislature takes some action on scientific gun research in the wake of the federal government's effective twenty-year ban on same. And, before we close, with triple-digit temps shattering records out here today, a few climate scientists remind us that their own research concerning global warming, finds it to be anything but a bleeping "hoax"...

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On today's very busy, very lively BradCast (and extra, special, surprise, bonus hour of The BradCast!), we cover the results of the latest (and, thankfully, final for this cycle) 'Super Tuesday' primary contests in California, New Jersey, North Dakota, South Dakota, New Mexico and Montana yesterday. [Audio links to both hours posted below!]

After coverage of responses from all three remaining candidates (Trump, Clinton and Sanders) to last night's reported results, and where they will each go from here, we take a look at some of the reported problems that folks had casting their votes, particularly here in Los Angeles County (the nation's largest voting jurisdiction).

Are the problems being reported in California as "just chaos" (LATimes) and "mired in voting problems" (HuffPo) as bad as some are reporting them to be? The main concerns, at this hour, seem to involve failed electronic ballot readers at L.A. polling places (which don't actually tabulate votes anyway) and voters forced to cast Provisional Ballots (some 240k in LA County alone) for a variety of reasons, some legit, some a bit more troubling.

Both voters and poll workers --- lots of them! --- call in today to report on polling problems from Tuesday, views on the primary in general, on AP reporting the Democratic contest as over on Monday before voters even voted on Tuesday, and much much more on today's show. In fact, the phone lines were so busy, with so many callers, that KPFK asked us to continue on for an unprecedented second hour of our special coverage! Both of which are now posted below...

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Download MP3 (BONUS HOUR!) or listen online below...

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It's getting stranger and stranger around here. On today's BradCast, I find myself a momentary bedfellow with both lobbyists and the pharmaceutical industry. But it won't last for long.

Among the stories covered on today's program [audio link posted below]...

• Tens of thousands of gallons of crude oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico (again). But Shell Oil is on the job, so why worry?;
• Speaking of oily, perhaps the plainest (if most bizarre) evidence yet that Donald Trump is a pathological liar, and why that actually matters;
• Exclusive details from the head of Maryland's State Elections Board, on the specific "irregularities" that triggered Thursday's remarkable decertification of election results from Baltimore in the state's April 26 Primary Election;
• The Obama Administration advises school districts across the nation on the rights of transgender students, and wingnut Republicans in Texas predictable freak out, even as GOP lawmakers in North Carolina allegedly threaten businesses and lobbyists;
• Pfizer blocks the use of its drugs for executions in the U.S.;
• And, finally, listeners ring in on our recent episode on the FDA's deadly new regulations for the vaping (e-cigarette) industry that run counter to scientists and doctors, but benefit Big Tobacco, Big Pharma and make it harder for smokers to quit smoking...

Strange days, indeed...

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On today's BradCast, as voters head to the polls for the big Presidential Primary in Indiana --- where many of them will again cast 100% unverifiable votes on touch-screen voting systems --- a Republican State Senator from Missouri joins us to explain his bill to do away with such systems in the Show-Me State. [Link to audio of the show at bottom of article.]

In April, St. Louis County held a disastrous local primary election in which, for the first time in years, they used only paper ballots at the polling places, since election officials said they did not have enough time, following the state's Presidential Primary in March, to reprogram the County's touch-screen systems. The County has long given voters the option to vote on hand-marked, optically-scanned paper ballots or on unverifiable touch-screen systems, with more and more voters choosing paper, even as local election officials encouraged them to vote on the oft-failed, easily-manipulated touch-screen machines.

The April disaster occurred when the County's co-Election Directors (one Democrat and one Republican, both of whom have gone on record to state they love the touch-screens and regard them as virtually infallible) failed to provide the correct paper ballots to some 60 precincts. There are now multiple ongoing investigations into the disaster from the state level on down. The Democratic Director has now been suspended and the Republican has tendered his resignation.

It's hardly the first time St. Louis County has screwed up their elections, but those human errors can be corrected with competent personnel. What can never be corrected is the fact that, for example, in the state's Presidential Primary in March, the reported margins of victory were so small (just over a thousand votes on each side), and the number of votes cast on unverifiable touch-screens in MO so large, that it is impossible to know if Trump actually beat Cruz on the Republican side and if Clinton actually beat Sanders on the Democratic side. Not a great way to run elections in the once-key swing state of Missouri.

Republican state Senator Bob Onder joins me on today's program to discuss his bill (SB 771) that calls for doing away with the state's touch-screen voting systems all together. Acknowledging the recent paper ballot foul-ups, Onder explains why the touch-screens are still worse: "you can't audit an electron."

"Only with a paper ballot can we have an auditable, verifiable record of a voter's intent as he or she casts a vote and exercises their most sacred privilege in our democratic republic, which is the right to vote," he says, going on to recall another local election in 2014 "in which the margin was very tight" and where "the loser in that election" is "not really sure he lost."

The GOP's Asst. Majority Floor Leader in the State Senate tells me about the various obstacles his legislation is facing, including from the state's Democratic Secretary of State Jason Kander who, he says, "is a big fan of electronic voting machines" and "an enemy of paper ballots."

It's a fascinating and encouraging conversation over all...at least until we discuss the MO Republicans' continuing push for disenfranchising Photo ID voting restrictions in the state, which Onder, unfortunately, supports (though apparently based on fraudulent information provided to him by some notorious GOP "voter fraud" hucksters, as I explain during the program.)

But, hey, we'll take what we can get! And if Republicans are willing to work with the long-time Election Integrity champions at Missourians for Honest Elections on the issue of banning touch-screens, I'll take it! We can try to get Dems on board and fight with Republicans about everything else on another day.

Also on today BradCast: Republican officials in WI and in KS continue their effort to suppress the vote and Desi Doyen joins us for the latest Green News Report' with good news for lions, elephants and children, but not so good for opponents of fracking...

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